Reflecting on production of a documentary

Although I found the process of making this documentary very rewarding and enjoyable, there are certainly some changes I would make in the preproduction process if I decided to make a second documentary. I would definitely spend more time with my subjects and interviewees to develop the best possible rapport before shooting. I would also endeavour to undertake much more research because I feel that if I had been more informed during the process of shooting this documentary then I would have had a better footing to tell the best possible story.


Originally I had planned to shoot in the Oddessy cinema, the Queens Film Theatre, The Tudor Cinema and in college but, due to time constraints, communication problems and a few other factors, I was only able to get footage in one of these four locations. At the last minute, however, I was able to find another subject. A colleague of my mother's, as it turns out, used to be a projectionist at the Curzon Cinema in Belfast – before it was demolished. Which leads me to the third change I would make to the preproduction process; I would tell everyone I know that I am making the documentary. Particularly because Belfast is such a small community, I should have known that there would be someone close to me who would know someone related to the topic. I suppose that business cards or flyers would be the most effective way to get the word out, and social media of course.


Another change I would make in the preproduction process would be to confirm shooting permission with all locations in writing well in advance of going to shoot, because on the day we were due to shoot at the Oddessy Cinema, our permission was revoked by management. This in turn set the project back in terms of time.


The post-production process was not without it's own hiccups. Having recorded the footage on my Sony a37 and recorded the audio on a zoom h4n, I obviously had to sync the data in the editing software. The problem is that the build of Premiere Pro CS6 which I have seems to have a bug which prevents it from opening sequences which contain merged clips. Although, after much scouring of Adobe forums, I did stumble across a work-around; for two or three hours it looked like I had lost quite a lot of progress. In future I think the best prevention for this issue will be to merge clips in a separate project and export them each separately before importing the new merged clips into my main project.


I definitely would consider making another documentary, or even expanding on this topic further as I feel that, due to time and permission issues, it has come out quite light on information. My subject, Jim McKeown is confident that he can secure shooting permission for me in the Tudor Cinema, Comber and I would love to explore that opportunity. I would also make contact with the QFT and Oddessy cinemas again in the hope of coming to better agreements and getting them involved.

Documentary Viewing and references

In our documentary unit classes we have had screenings of notable and influential documentaries; from Robert J. Flaherty's "Nanook Of The North" (a pioneering docudrama from the early 20th century) to the polar opposite, quite literally, in Werner Herzog's  stunning, cinematic investigation of the people of Antarctica's Camp McMurdo "Encounters At The End Of The World".

My initial perception of documentary filmmaking, going into this module, was that it dealt purely with the factual. The thing that struck me about "Nanook..." was how Flaherty, in the 1920s had already begun to manipulate and influence the subjects in his film to give it a narrative. It then became clear that almost all documentary subjects, particularly human subjects, must be manipulated and influenced by the filmmaker. A documentary maker is no less a storyteller than a filmmaker who deals in fiction.

Since watching "Encounters..." I have watched a few other Herzog documentaries (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Grizzly Man) and it seems to me that his greatest gift as a storyteller is his unique perspective. The pattern in the residents of McMurdo of having always been outsiders, loners or separatists of one kind or another is one that few others would have spotted, and the comparison between these people and the rogue penguin was quite moving.

Another stand-out documentary to me was Sarah Polley's "Stories We Tell". This film covers the challenging story of her upbringing, her parents' problems within their marriage, her search for her biological father and her mother's death. Although the subject of Polley's film is predominantly herself, the story is told in such a way that we are invited to share the experiences of all of the family that surrounded her parents throughout their marriage and during her search for her father. The use of very convincing re-enactments and recreations also brings the viewer much closer to the story.

The documentaries we have viewed in class have been very informative and useful to help me gain a better understanding of the role of a documentary filmmaker.